My life… with a few chickens thrown in for good measure

Posts tagged ‘chicks’

The two sablepoots are getting their feathers in & look a bit bedraggled at the 3 week Mark.
The pekins are looking fab! 7 out of 9 have frizzled and I think they are going to be quite beautiful by the time they are 12 weeks old.

So far I have 2 definite doodlers, a lavender frizzle and a black frizzle. Time will tell if any more decide to show their true colours off. Basically you look for a big comb with wattles, and two have wattles already! Girls tend not to develop their head gear as quick. Boys will also attempt to doodle around the 9 to 12 weeks stage

In an attempt at feather sexing at a day old I figured 5 boys and 6 girls but I’ve found from past experience it’s not been a particularly reliable science as far as pekins are concerned

So, on day 18 for my 9 eggs & day 17 for the eggs from chickenstreet (Saturday) I stopped the turning mechanism and increased the humidity to 65%. I noticed quite a few of the eggs were rocking, including the ones not due to stop turning til the following day, which was very early for rocking! All candled ok so looked forward to 12 babies to start hatching on the Tuesday/Wednesday.
However on the evening of day 19 (Sunday) I noticed this…

pipped egg

This little chick had pipped 2 days early!
At first I was excited but I then had a mild panic as it was now bedtime and I hadn’t got anything ready. The brooder wasn’t clean in fact it was still full of toys ( yes its a plastic toybox), I hadn’t sterilised the drinker or cleaned and disinfected the electric hens.I had bought the chick crumb so at least they could eat. Luckily the chicks stay in the incubator for approximately 24 hours before needing to go in a brooder so I had the following day to get it all ready. Because the chicks pip was quite big, I expected it would hatch overnight, so I set up the CCTV.

Its a wired system but so easy to use, in the morning when I switched the tv on I was greeted by not one, but two little chicks!

Two early chicks! both my pekins one lavender and one black. the rest followed in fairly quick succession over that and the following day.

little black pekin chick on its way out below

while all this was going on I got the brooder all set up and once the chicks were fluffy and dry they moved into the brooder, which meant the just hatched ones could rest.

Unfortunately the last egg containing a lemon cuckoo chick from chickenstreet was bashed about by the others. The shell was broken, breaking blood vessels in the membrane and the chick inside died.

These are the 11 that did hatch, pictures taken on their way to the brooder, approx 24 hrs old.

They are the loveliest little things, the sablepoots ( one is pictured with a penny) are tiny!
Their feathers started coming through really quickly! I think 7 or 8 of my 9 pekins are frizzled

I started running my incubator yesterday to make sure all was well with it, it’s currently situated in the attic as that has a stable temperature and I can brood them up there too.
This will be my second hatch with the Rcom. I used the universal tray that came with it last time (sort of adjustable columns to pop eggs in )and I’m not convinced it turned all of the 12 eggs particularly well. With that in mind I invested in the 20 egg tray which has a cut out for each egg evenly spaced and I’m hoping this will do the job a lot better.
I like the fact that this incubator is fairly simple to use it needs minimal fiddling with. Aside from candling eggs at day 6 and 14 all you really need to do is you fill the reservoir and check it’s topped up every 3 days, set the humidity (45) and temp (37.5), set the ‘turning’ to ‘on’ and you are good to go!
18 days later up the humidity to 65 and set ‘turning’ to ‘off’ then wait for the baby chicks to hatch 🙂
The eggs above are from my pekins 5 from flower x Alice and 2 are frizz x Alice. Tomorrow I shall pop some more eggs in from the lovely Andy at Chickenstreet
I shall post candling results hopefully with pictures if embryo’s are clear enough to see.
Fingers crossed for a happy hatch 🙂

I hatched tikka and nugget from my own stock. Then hatched frizz a mottled pekin.

I bought a box of pekin cockerels (they were supposed to be girls) from ardingly, frizzles noodles, Alice and two smooth reds.

Next hatch was pekins spot and Sally.

A few weeks after them I upgraded the incubator and I hatched Dobby a bantam orp & pekins Hattie,jelly,tallulah & moony.

I was also given two pretty little lemon pyle brahma girls

There have been downsides, Dave & 2 of the rocks died 😦
And some of the others went to fab homes.

I currently I have 10 hens and 3 doodlers can never get them all in 1 pic together…

Thats todays gratuitous chicken blog mainly just to say there is more to chickens than eggs, KFC, yorkshire puddings and gravy! they make fab pets and are great little characters to have bimbling around the garden (or the living room)

DISCLAIMER: having got them a new massive shed I can AND will do one more hatch 🙂

First you need some vet wrap, one roll is around £3.50. (you don’t *have* to choose pink)

You need to cut a thin strip along the width

I have substituted pens for chick legs in the absence of tiny chicks….

Wrap one end of vet wrap around chicks leg and press into the middle then repeat on opposite side, it doesn’t need to be tight around the leg just secure to stop legs splaying..

And there you have hobbles!
The vet wrap ones don’t stick to the chick like plasters, they don’t impede walking, eating & drinking like plasters either. Easily adjusted multiple times as will always stick to itself. So 3 or 4 days in vet wrap hobbles and hips are usually sorted! You just unpeel the wrap away from itself when finished.